


My Time

by Fabro-de-omres (Fabro)



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, I mean as much as time travel ever is, Light Angst, Lloyd is simultaneously bad at feelings and a total drama queen, Lloyd's trying his best, Ninjago 10th Anniversary, Nostalgia, Team Feels, Time Travel, no beta we die like zane, ns2, with Lloyd coming from post-ns6 but pre-dotd, you watch ninjago. you cant be critical of my take on time travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28530306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabro/pseuds/Fabro-de-omres
Summary: Lloyd goes to sleep in 2017.  He wakes in 2012."So," says Cole. "Time travel."
Comments: 25
Kudos: 119





	1. i think i was in yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Lol this fic has been floating around in my head ever since last February I think! Title and original premise were inspired by [My Time](https://doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/2020/02/21/my-time/), which I highly recommend listening to at some point (try not to think about Lloyd as you do. I dare you). Happy 10th Anniversary Ninjago! The next chapter should be up within the next week or so (maybe. hopefully). :D

What wakes Lloyd up isn't the sudden shift in temperature: from the pleasantly heated bedrooms of the _Bounty_ to the cool indoors of a room with crappy heating. It isn't the sudden increase of noise, either, as buses honk and cars speed by outside. And it isn't even the sudden lack of bodies pressed against his.

No. What wakes Lloyd is the fact that he's suddenly standing upright, feet planted against a chilly concrete floor, without a single memory of ever getting out of bed.

He sways dangerously. Sleep flees his mind as he tries to balance- a harder feat than one might think when one's just woken up _standing-_ and he ends up clutching a metal post to keep himself from faceplanting into the ground.

Crisis momentarily averted, Lloyd cracks open his eyes.

He's standing in the midst of a tiny cramped room. Beds line the walls. In the dim light, he can see lumps sleepily shifting beneath the blankets.

This is not where he went to bed last night. Last night, the entire team had collapsed in Cole's king-sized bed following a 4-hour patrol of the city. Now that bed- and the rest of his team- are nowhere to be found.

Where in the world is he?

Lloyd forces himself to breathe slowly. Panicking will do him no good- he's learned this by watching the ninja crash and burn several times over when they do.

He turns around, intending to- to what? To leave? To run out into the streets and figure it out from there? But immediately, his foot catches on something hard and metallic and he goes sprawling onto the floor. Whatever he tripped over knocks into more metal, deafening the near-silent room with a clash.

Lloyd scrambles to his feet, wincing and cursing himself. What's the use of enhanced eyesight when you can't see six inches in front of yourself, he gripes, groping wildly behind himself for the door. What idiot leaves weapons lying in the middle of the floor?

Wait a minute.

Lloyd stills, hand still outstretched. He draws it back to himself slowly, sinking into a crouch to the floor. Across from him is the handle of a sword, glinting faintly where the sunlight from the slatted window lights it up. He prods it with his foot, and it rolls more fully into the light.

Gold.

Lloyd stares for a long second, brain stalling like an overloaded chromebook. Golden weapons. Golden weapons- golden weapons? Why would anyone make weapons out of gold? Anyone with a basic minecraft encyclopedia could tell you that gold is the worst thing to make weapons out of- in fact, there's only one set of golden weapons that Lloyd has ever heard of.

Lloyd stands quickly. He needs to find Sensei Wu. He needs to tell him that someone has found the Golden Weapons- either that or he's stumbled upon some very convincing forgeries. He needs to find his friends.

He turns and slams into a human chest.

Both Lloyd and the stranger go to the ground. There's scrambling, and a grunt as Lloyd nails the other in the ribs, and then Lloyd finds his feet and lights up his fist. The room unfurls in shades of green, illuminating the bunk beds and the other guy. He's got long shaggy brown hair and a tanned, _very naked_ chest- and strangely enough, his fist is raised in a mirror of Lloyd's; albeit of course without the flame.

Lloyd blinks. The other guy glares at him, eyes flicking back and forth between Lloyd's face and fist. "Who are you?" he demands. "How'd you get in here?"

And Lloyd-

Lloyd knows that voice.

The other guy's baby-faced. There's no scar across his eye. His torso is likewise unscarred. But there's no mistaking it. That head of hair, that half-awake glare- it's:

"Kai?" Lloyd stutters.

There's movement from the rest of the room by now. Kai's face goes slack.

"Wow," someone says behind him. "I thought we were famous, but not _that_ famous."

"Not the time, Jay," another person- _Cole-_ hisses.

Lloyd takes a step back. Then another. The rest of the ninja gather around him in a loose semi-circle. _Jay_ , Lloyd thinks wildly, _and Cole. And that's Zane, and Nya-_

Kai narrows his eyes. "I'll ask you one more time. Who are you?"

"Should we call Sensei Wu?" Jay whispers. He has a candle lighter, of all things, pointed out in front of him like a weapon, tiny flame flickering faintly at its end.

"We don't have our elemental powers," Zane says, somewhere in the background.

"Doesn't matter, we're still ninja," Cole says. He smacks his fist against his palm, mouth a firm line.

"Guys! Guys!" Lloyd yelps, holding up his hands. "It's me! It's Lloyd!" He shouts again, shrinking away from a shuriken that appears out of nowhere.

Kai laughs. "Nice try, blondie. Maybe if you were a foot shorter and also a baby. You've got to be older than me- what are you, twenty?"

"Nineteen," Lloyd says, glancing around for anything to help him. No such luck, of course. "And it really is me!" he insists, taking another step backward. "I don't know what's happening! You're the ones that look weird!"

"Cole," Zane says slowly. "He does rather… resemble him, doesn't he?"

Cole doesn't take his eyes off Lloyd. "What are you telling me, Zane?"

Lloyd locks eyes with Zane, pleading. The ice ninja bites his bottom lip. "It's not like we haven't seen stranger," he says. "What if-?"

"Kai? Cole? What's going on?"

A sleepy voice rises from outside the circle. Nya and Zane share a meaningful look, talking with just their expressions. After a second, they part away to reveal a shorter body behind them.

The newcomer shuffles into the light. He rubs one eye, blinking slowly against the sun.

Lloyd freezes. So does kid him, half around his yawn. They stare at each other like the spiderman meme, only with less pointing and more enormous doe eyes. This close, their similarities are unmistakable.

"Oh my gosh," someone whispers behind him. "It _is_ him."

Jay screams and sets Kai's bed on fire.

* * *

Twenty-seven minutes later finds them sitting in a haphazard ring on the sopping pillows and beds and floor.

"So," says Cole. "Time travel."

Lloyd can't take his eyes off him. Cole's hair is so _fluffy_ , short and puffed up at the sides and back, so unlike the long layers he boasts now. He's skinnier, too- twiggier, Lloyd might say was the situation anything different. But his thoughts have no room for jokes right now, let alone teasing. He's in a room with the baby versions of his teammates. _He's in a room with the baby versions of his teammates._

A bead of water falls into Lloyd's hair and runs down the side of his cheek. Instinctively, he looks for the source- the sprinkler is still dripping pathetically overhead- before he realizes again that he doesn't need to be hyperaware of liquid. Cole's _human_ still, with solid fingers and limbs and clothes. Water won't harm him any more than sunlight.

"How are you so calm about this?" Jay hisses. "Maybe you didn't notice, but there's a nineteen-year-old sitting in our bedroom who's supposed to be _eleven_. Why am I the only one freaking out about this?"

Lloyd's mouth quirks up despite himself. So some things never change. Jay's left eye isn't twitching like it does when he's particularly upset, but besides that, his reaction and expression is the mirror image of the older Jay he knows. Nya's attitude is also familiar- confidence and curiosity in the face of something new for her to poke and prod at.

"Ignore Jay," she says now, which... _is_ a very Nya thing for her to do. "What's the future like? Are there flying cars? Spaceships? Giant crabs?"

"Giant crabs?" Kai echoes.

Nya shrugs her shoulders in a 'why not?' motion.

"I don't know about any giant crabs," Lloyd says. "But we do have spaceships. And we had flying cars for a minute there, but everyone decided to collectively forget them and go back to the normal ones."

Kai scoffs. "Sure, because these are the sort of questions we should be asking right now." He leans forward, eyebrows drawn together, elbows digging into his skinny thighs. "The better question is: how in the heck did he get here? And what are we supposed to do with him now?"

"Putting it that way makes him sound like chattel," Zane chastises mildly. "I'm sure there's a completely logical explanation for this, and we'll have it all sorted out soon."

He looks at Lloyd expectantly. The rest of them follow, and suddenly Lloyd has six pairs of wide Bambi eyes staring a hole into his face. Kid him's are the largest by far, with big red pupils practically swallowing up his head.

There's really only one thing to do in the face of such a sneak attack. Lloyd eeps and hides his face behind his hands.

There's laughter above him, and then a gentle hand is pressed against his back, stroking lightly. "My apologies," comes Zane's gently amused voice. "I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that."

Lloyd presses into the touch, eyes falling shut almost of their own will. He marvels at the warmth coming off the ice ninja's skin; his Zane is perpetually cool to the touch with his shiny metal finish. Seeing Zane like this has definitely given him the most whiplash out of all of them. At this point, he's almost been with titanium Zane longer than he had been with the human-looking one.

He lifts his head, eyes darting around the room. "Uh, yeah, I'm as clueless as you guys are," he admits. "Sorry I'm not that much of a help."

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Cole says. "This isn't your fault, alright?" He leans forward and gives Lloyd an encouraging smile. "How about you tell us what you remember, and we'll go from there?"

Reluctantly, Lloyd sits up straighter. Zane's hand falls from his back, and it can't have been five seconds but he already misses it. "I don't know," he says again. "I just opened my eyes and I was standing here. I saw your weapons and I wanted to find you- the other yous," he clarifies.

Cole nods slowly, mouth pressed into a thoughtful line.

"There was nothing on our end," Nya says. "No flash of light or bang or whatever. I'm a light sleeper, so I would have woken up."

Lloyd feels himself frown. "What's just happened for you?" he asks. The ninja are harder to place, but just looking at his kid self tells him he's got to be at least four years in the past. He reaches out a hand to bring the kid closer.

"Wait!" Jay shouts. "Don't touch him!"

Everyone's eyes dart between him and Lloyd. The lightning ninja's eyes are wide. "What if you accidentally cause a time paradox and destroy Ninjago?"

Lloyd rolls his eyes. "You read _way_ too much Starfarer," he says, slapping his hand down over his kid self's. "If something bad was gonna happen, shouldn't it already have happened by now?"

"You don't know that," Jay argues, but the tenseness in his shoulders uncoils as each second ticks by without one of them exploding.

"We just fought the Great Devourer," Cole says, in answer to his earlier question. "Oh, and Garmadon stole our ship so now we're here."

Lloyd nods. He expected as much. There was only so much time between moving into this tiny apartment and him taking the Tea, after all.

Speaking of the kid-

Kid him is still holding onto Lloyd's hand. Lloyd sees, from the corner of his eye, how he's comparing their skin- Lloyd's battle-scarred, his baby self's smooth and unharmed. Kid him looks up then. Their eyes meet; kid Lloyd's eyebrows pull together slightly.

"What happened to your eyes?" he asks quietly.

Lloyd's hand rises against his will. "Oh," he says. "Uh."

He knows how much he prized his red pupils as a child- his skin and hair and teeth were all dissimilar to his father's, but their eyes were always something they shared. To have that one link to his dad replaced-

"Green Ninja stuff," he says eventually. "Don't worry about it, yeah?"

Kid him does not seem pleased by this cop-out answer. The rest of the ninja, however, have perked up at his mention of Green Ninja.

"You have to have had your true potential," Jay gushes. "What was it like? What can you do?"

Even Cole and Kai look interested, and Zane watches him intently. Lloyd figures there isn't harm in showing them a little bit of his powers. He puts out his hands. A small flame sparks in one and ice crystallizes in the other. Then he drops both of them and passes a thin bolt of lightning between his pointer fingers. Nothing too explosive- he's not in the mood to show off- but the ninja ooh and ahh anyway.

"I, uh, don't know where any earth is," he says, reabsorbing the lightning, "but I can do that too." Finally he calls on his energy, letting the green light pulse in his palms.

Jay barks out a laugh. "Would you look at that control!" He elbows kid Lloyd in the ribs cheekily. "Maybe you could stand to learn some of that, huh?"

Lloyd flashes back to cases and cases of broken light bulbs. He laughs sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. Jay's teasing is second nature at this point and it makes something warm light up inside him.

But kid Lloyd ducks his head, avoiding eye contact. He laughs too, but it sounds forced to Lloyd's ears. None of the others seem to notice it, talking over each other in their urge to ask questions.

"What was that last one?" Zane asks.

"It's my true element," Lloyd says, eyes darting back to his kid self. "Energy."

" _Neato_ ," Jay whispers to himself.

Lloyd's forgotten, somewhat, how his life used to be. How it used to be before he became a ninja, before he joined the crew and found his place and his family. But seeing his younger self now causes his memories to come back in a rush, spilling over and into every corner of his mind. Harsh lights, deep frowns, and jeering laughter. Humiliation at being called out in front of the whole class and phantom stinging in his hands, even now as they rest awkwardly at his sides.

"I can give you some pointers," he blurts.

The rest of the ninja blink at him and his seemingly out-of-nowhere outburst. But kid Lloyd's eyes shoot up to his face, wide and startled.

"With your lightning," Lloyd stumbles. "Or any of them, actually. The four. That I can do. Yep."

Kai snorts. "Glad to see you're still just as much of a mess." He's staring at Lloyd, a furrow to his eyebrows. Lloyd looks away quickly. It's not unusual for Kai to glare, but it's not usually at him. It's to be expected, he tells himself. Kai doesn't trust easily. Plus, he's protective as hell. It's no wonder he'd be more distant than the others.

Knowing why doesn't mean he feels any better about it.

"Be nice," Nya scolds him.

Kai harrumphs and doesn't respond.

Out of nowhere, a shriek pierces the air. Before he can think, Lloyd has energy gathered in his palms. His eyes dart around, landing eventually on the ringing alarm clock Jay now holds in his hands.

Oh.

Sheepishly, Lloyd discharges his energy. The rest of the ninja are staring at him with varying degrees of shock: Zane and Jay looking nervous, while Kai, Nya and Cole look ready to intervene. Kid Lloyd stares at his hands, where the glowing green element had been only moments before, before his eyes rise to rest on Lloyd's face.

"Sorry," Lloyd says, dropping his hands and fiddling with his pajama sleeve. "Just- reflexes."

Cole regards him warily. Nya's eyes shift quickly between Lloyd and the alarm clock. "Are you okay?" she asks, gently, talking in the way that someone might to a spooked animal.

But Lloyd's fine! He says as much to them. "No, no, I'm good. It's all good." He rubs the back of his neck. "I was just surprised, honestly. I thought I destroyed that thing years ago."

He cracks a grin. Thankfully, it plus the joke seems to diffuse the tension in the room. Jay's shoulders slump slightly and he lets out a weak laugh. "Why haven't we thought of that yet?" he jokes back.

Cole takes the abandoned alarm clock and replaces it on the table. "Unfortunately, that's our cue to get up and at it."

"Really?" Kai steals a glance at the clock face. "We've been up that long?" He groans. "My beauty sleep."

"Not that it does him much good," Jay mumbles beneath his breath.

"What did you just say?"

"If you want to sleep more, you should!"

Lloyd stifles his laugh- a puff of air, really. Jay catches it anyway and grins at him.

Cole rolls his eyes at their antics. "If only that were the case." He turns to Lloyd then, eyebrows pulling together like when he's trying to solve some puzzle or strategy. "We've got to go," he says, not rudely. "Nya, Jay, and I have jobs, and the rest of you have training to do. We can't be getting lax for when Garmadon returns."

"The older Lloyd could come with Kai and me," Zane offers. He looks at Lloyd, addressing him directly. "We were planning to take Lloyd to the dojo today, and you could give him those pointers you mentioned earlier."

Lloyd nods quickly. Whatever is easiest for them- it's not like he's the one they're inconveniencing. "That sounds good to me."

The room bursts into chaos around him. This Lloyd knows- this is something he's intimately familiar with. He can almost relax into the familiarity of Kai and Jay digging clothes from the piles at the foot of their beds, giving them the sniff test and shoving shirts over their heads. In the corner, Zane is popping pieces of bread out of a toaster. Jay shoves one of them into his mouth, hollering something around it as he tugs a jacket on and barrels out of the door. Kid Lloyd stands with his arms crossed beside it, looking for all the world like the angsty eleven-year-old that he is.

A clearing of a throat brings Lloyd's attention back to himself. Nya is standing right next to him. She looks Lloyd up and down, the corner of her mouth quirking up. "Do you have any other clothes? Not that I'm not loving these, but…"

Lloyd looks down at himself. Oh, right. He wiggles one foot, the little dragon head on his slipper bobbing up and down. He was teleported here in his pajamas. He lifts his head again, offering a sheepish grin. "Uh…"

Nya rolls her eyes fondly. "Idiot," she says. Her eyes look him up and down appraisingly. "You look like you'd fit some of Kai's things, though." She starts to rifle through a bag at the foot of the bed, tossing several articles onto the mattress. "Try these."

Lloyd picks up a familiar jacket. "Isn't this mine?" he almost asks, before remembering that the hoodie _had been_ originally Kai's. It's less worn now, with only one scorch mark on the sleeve and the patches still in solid pieces. He tugs it on over his head, and it's amazing what the tiny piece of familiarity does to settle him. He feels his shoulders relax gently and realizes that his jaw has been clenching without him even aware of it.

When he looks up, Nya is eyeing him with a considering expression. It vanishes as soon as she catches him looking, a grin replacing the straight line of her mouth. "Looking good, kiddo." She passes him some sweatpants and a pair of shoes to go with them.

"See you later, Kneecap," Kai says, pushing between them in his dash to the door.

"Okay, Moron," Nya says back. She smacks him with her pajama pants before he jumps out of her range.

Lloyd will never understand siblings.

Nya catches sight of his face as she turns back around and starts laughing. Better hurry," she tells him, eyes scrunching up into a smile. "Grab some food before you go, you'll be glad for it later."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Lloyd says seriously.

Outside, the weather is cool with the turning seasons. Lloyd glances down the sidewalk and finds Kai, Zane, and his younger self, idling by the crossroads. He meets eyes with Kai; the fire ninja stares back expressionlessly.

Lloyd's not sure what Kai's thinking. But when it comes to the fire ninja and situations like this, there are really only two reactions he has: outright aggression or complete and utter lack of acknowledgment. Judging by the way he was acting earlier, Lloyd's leaning towards the former.

"So where are we going?" he asks, jogging to catch up with the group.

Kai's eyes narrow when they land on what Lloyd's wearing. But he doesn't say anything and after a second turns away. He jerks his head down the road and Zane and kid him start walking that way.

Lloyd shakes his head. Right. They don't have the _Bounty_ back yet. Guess they're gonna take the flashier route.

Lloyd puts his hands out in front of himself. He reaches for the ball of energy within that will summon his dragon. Someone makes an interested noise. He pauses and glances up.

"What are you doing?" Kai asks. He doesn't sound very impressed.

"My dragon?" Lloyd says.

"Dragon?" Zane repeats.

Kid Lloyd perks up. "Dregon? You mean I get one too?"

"We all do," Lloyd says, glancing from Kai, to Zane, and back again. The fire ninja has one eyebrow raised, hands on his hips. "You guys have Ultra, right? Or is this some alternate timeline thing again?"

Zane shakes his head. "We have the Ultra-dragon," he says. "It's just that he's rather… large to take through the city."

"Oh," Lloyd says. "I guess that makes sense." He lowers his hands, still slightly confused. "How are we gonna get there, then?"

"With our legs, idiot." Kai starts up a brisk pace. "We're walking," he shouts back, not bothering to even turn his head.

Zane gives him a small sympathetic smile as he starts off again after the fire ninja. Kid him looks disappointed at the lack of dragons as he hurries on short legs to catch up. And Lloyd trails behind them all, still feeling like a lost child even as they arrive at their destination.

It's a bit shocking, stepping back into the place he used to frequent so often as a kid. Lloyd's gotten used to _his_ state-of-the-art training equipment and dojo. It's a stark comparison to the frivolously-decorated-but-functionally-lacking Mojo Dojo.

"Do you still train here in your time?" kid Lloyd asks, seeing the way he glances around.

Lloyd shakes his head. "No, it's more like- remember that training room from our first apartment?"

Kid Lloyd's eyes blow wide. But before he has a chance to respond, a rustling curtain of beads from the door in the corner announces the arrival of the owner.

"Hello, ninja," says Dareth, sweeping into the room. He does a double-take when he sees Lloyd, standing there awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. "Who's the new fella?"

"Dareth," Zane says. "This is…" He pauses, stumped.

"My cousin Floyd," Kai butts in.

Lloyd nods quickly. "That's me!"

Dareth gives him a suspicious look. "Are you sure about that," he drawls out slowly. "Or is he a more-grown-up version of the little guy from a future parallel universe?"

"Definitely not!" Lloyd says brightly. "That would be ridiculous!"

Dareth does not look convinced as he starts to polish his trophies.

"Classic Dareth," Lloyd laughs nervously.

"Ignore him," Kai says. He tosses his duffel bag haphazardly in the direction of the wall. It slaps against the wood and slips pathetically to the ground. "Who wants to go first?"

"We'll watch for now," Zane says, giving Lloyd gentle direction in the same way his mom sometimes does. Lloyd allows himself to be directed. He leans against the wall and crosses his arms.

Kai claps his hands loudly. "Alright, well there's no reason to waste time. Let's get started."

For not having fully recovered his elemental power, the jet of flames that Kai manages to punch out is impressive. Fire bursts from his clenched fingers, disappearing a moment later but unmistakably upping the temperature of the room. Lloyd flinches, not expecting the attack. You'd think living with a bunch of trigger-happy elementals would desensitize you to this sort of thing, he grumbles to himself. Then again, all the PTSD and battlefront trauma probably balances it out.

He glances up then, and without meaning to meets Kai's eyes. The fire ninja is staring at him, lips quirked into a smirk that doesn't quite reach his eyes. When he sees Lloyd looking, his face shutters and he glances away.

"Fire!" he exclaims, turning to find kid Lloyd. "It's been a while since we did this, huh kiddo? Jay's been taking up all your time with that lightbulb nonsense."

"But I am getting good at it," kid Lloyd protests, most likely remembering the morning's conversation exactly like Lloyd is also doing.

"Well, now it's time to get good at this too." Kai kneels down in front of kid Lloyd, placing his hand around the younger boy's. "I think about fire like a bonfire," he says. "It's all about power, okay? To use fire, you've got to _feel_ that power inside of you."

Kid Lloyd watches Kai with eyes that just barely manage to keep the stars out of them. He nods rapidly. Lloyd himself suppresses the urge to groan and hide his face. Is this what he looks like when he looks at Kai?

No wonder the others give him so much hardship about it. What a nerd.

Kai gives kid him's hand a squeeze. "You ready to try?" he asks, standing again.

Kid Lloyd narrows his eyes. "I'm ready!"

Kai beams. "Good. Great. So just-" Kai curls his fingers into a fist. "Augh!"

"Augh!" kid Lloyd shouts. He punches out and nearly topples over from the force he puts behind it. The weak jet of flame that spurts sadly from his fist is horribly anticlimactic in comparison.

Kai tugs at his hair. Bits and pieces of it are out of place now, giving his head even more of an anime boy vibe than it already had. "That was a good try, Lloyd," he says.

Kid Lloyd scowls. "Don't try to lie to me. It was horrible."

"It was good!" At kid Lloyd's look, he amends with, "It wasn't your worst."

Kid Lloyd sulks. "I'm never gonna get it."

Kai's expression turns pinched. It's obvious he's doing his best to explain. It's equally obvious that it's just not working. "Lloyd-" he starts.

"Can I?" Lloyd asks quietly. He's not sure what he's expecting to happen, but Kai looks at him and actually looks like he's considering it.

"Yeah, alright," he says finally. "You can't do worse than I'm doing already." They share a look, and then Kai takes a small step back, arms crossed over his chest.

Lloyd breathes out softly. "Hey," he says, dropping down to one knee beside the kid. He gives him a reassuring grin. "Let's try something new- something that usually helps me."

 _That_ gets kid him to pay attention, just like Lloyd thought it would. It's not everyday your future self drops in to give you personalized tips and tricks, he thinks wryly. If another future Lloyd would ever like to show up, he certainly wouldn't be opposed to weaseling information from him either.

"Close your eyes," he instructs. "I want you to focus on your body. Take some deep breaths." He watches the kid do so, face evening out a little as he exhales. "Good. Now. Can you find your fire again?" He waits patiently for the kid to nod. "What does it feel like to you?"

Kid Lloyd's nose scrunches up. "Warm?" he says, half like a question and half like a statement.

"Warm," Lloyd agrees. "But what else can you tell me about it?"

Kid him is silent for another moment. "It feels… kinda like a heartbeat," he ventures, with the slowness of someone who's not sure they're right but desperately wants to be.

"That's what it feels like for me too," Lloyd says, grinning despite himself at the way kid him relaxes. "Kai's right when he says his fire feels like a bonfire. But it's different for each person." He lowers his voice a little. "I have this friend who says hers feels like a flickering candle. And ours-" he finishes, squeezing his hand, "ours feels like a heartbeat."

He pulls back slightly. "So when you use your fire, don't try to make it one big blast. That's how Kai's works. Let it out slower. Your fire isn't as strong as his, but you can make it last much longer."

Kid Lloyd nods slowly. "I think I get it."

"That's great!" Lloyd praises. "Now try it one more time." He steps back to give him some space, returning to the sidelines with Zane.

Kid him pulls back his hand. And then he punches out again- only this time the jet of flame that spills from his fist flows like water. It rolls across the room, fading out only as it reaches the far wall.

Kid him stares at his hand like he can't believe it's attached to him. He raises his eyes and meets Lloyd's. A gummy grin tugs at the corner of his mouth, wobbly like he's still not fully processed what just happened. Lloyd grins back, his excitement infectious.

Suddenly, whooping and hollering filter back into the world. Kai scoops kid Lloyd up, running around the room with him clinging to his back like an oversized koala.

"I knew you could do it!" Kai shouts.

Kid him giggles giddily. "I did it! I made fire! Did you see it, Kai?"

"See it- of course I saw it!" Kai slips kid Lloyd from his back to dangle in front of him, toes barely scraping the ground, in a move that looks effortless but that Lloyd knows he'd never be able to execute himself. "You did it, kiddo!" he cheers, swinging kid Lloyd back and forth like Long Cat.

Lloyd steps back against the wall with Zane.

"You did a good job with him," Zane observes.

Lloyd laughs, ducking his head. "Kai did too," he says. "It's just that I've already lived all of this so I know what works." He's completely honest when he says it. For knowing next to nothing about raising and training the green ninja, his ninja did a remarkable job at it. But now that Lloyd's here, somehow, he knows what worked and what didn't. If he didn't teach this group all he knows now, it would just be a waste of knowledge. "Not much changes in five years, honestly."

"Five years?" Zane asks, eyebrows flying up.

"Yeah," Lloyd says, giving him an odd look. "That's when I'm from." Wait a minute, did he do the math wrong? "This is 2012, right?" he checks.

"It is," Zane says, brows pulling together now. He looks at Lloyd in that way of his where it feels like he's seeing straight into him. "Hmm." He's quiet for several more seconds before he hums again -this time in clear dismissal of his thoughts. "Do you have any pointers for teaching him ice?"

Lloyd wants to press, wants to ask him what that hum means. But he makes himself refrain. Zane gets like this sometimes, ever observing the world around him. If he wants to tell him, he'll tell him when he feels ready.

"Sure," he says instead, letting the subject drop. "Let me show you what I know."

* * *

Lloyd stares at the ceiling.

The gentle and not-so-gentle snores of his team surround him, and normally, that would be enough to lull him to sleep. But it feels off tonight, like everything else, a world moved two inches to the left.

Lloyd rolls onto his side and wraps his pillow around his head. Cole chokes in the bed beside him. It's the same way he used to gasp in his sleep before he got the testing and the machine to fix it. On the floor, Zane breathes deeply and evenly- something he hasn't done ever since he turned titanium and purged the 'bloatware, really' from his systems. He's down there with Kai and Nya, having given up his bed earlier in the night for Lloyd. When Lloyd had tried to refuse, they'd ganged up on him, whining about rotation schedules and the like until he'd given in and accepted it.

Lloyd wants to sleep. He knows the value of sleep intimately, and normally it only takes him sitting down in a semi-stable environment for five minutes for him to conk out. He doesn't want to waste their generosity, but his brain refuses to shut off.

Huffing, he sits up in bed. This is useless. He needs air.

Lloyd slides his feet off the side of the bed. He gathers the blanket around his shoulders and transfers his weight fluidly to the ground for the least amount of squeaks. The floor is trapped with wrappers, clothes, and tools, but Lloyd's been doing this for years. Now that he knows his surroundings, it's easy to pick his way across the room, making nary a sound.

He eases the door open and slips into the hallway. Their apartment lacks a balcony, but they're on the third floor and he doesn't really want to go all the way down to ground level. His eyes catch on something outside the hall window. There- a glint of metal. Moving closer, he sees it's a fire escape.

Lloyd unlatches the window. The platform part of the fire escape is above him and a little to the right. He eyes the distance critically, knotting his blanket around his waist and wrapping it tight. Shimmying out the window, he reaches up and climbs onto the top of the frame. The platform is eye level with him now. He keeps his eyes on the railing and leaps, landing in a cat's hold with his feet braced against the metal.

Lloyd pulls himself up to balance on the railing. He drops onto the fire escape, the only sound a muffled thump.

The apartments and their tenants sleep on.

He walks to the railing, feeling the metal shift and settle beneath his feet. The cool evening air washes against his skin, teasing the fringe lying flat on his forehead. He wishes he could see the stars. But the sky is muddy with the pollution of the city.

Lloyd tips his head back, unknotting the blanket from his waist. He wraps it around his shoulders with an exhale.

How is he supposed to get back home?

He stands there for what feels like hours or minutes. The moon passes behind clouds and comes out the other side. A siren wails several blocks over. The voices of men spill out of a bar, loud with tongues loosened by inebriation.

Like this, the city feels timeless.

There's a noise beneath him. Lloyd blinks, coming back to himself. Reflexively, he drops into a smooth crouch- the less of yourself visible, the better. He shifts forward, pressing up against the railing.

He glances down. The bars block his view somewhat, but he can see the shapes of two people coming out of the apartment building. They settle against the wall. A light strikes up between them- the flare of a lighter.

"So," says one, and Lloyd recognizes Zane's voice. "This is… unprecedented."

The other one laughs humorlessly. It's Cole, of course. "That's one way to put it," he says. In the dimness, Lloyd watches him lean back against the wall. "Man. When I woke up this morning, let me tell you. I was not expecting _this_."

"He's grown taller."

"He's nineteen now." Cole scrubs a hand down his face. " _Nineteen_. He's older than me now, Zane. Older than all of us, well, except you."

"He's still him, though."

There's a pause. "Yeah," Cole says finally, like an exhale. "He's still him." He laughs then. "I can't believe it took us that long to recognize him, if I'm being honest. He still has that deer-in-the-headlights look when he's under pressure."

Zane is silent. When he finally speaks, it's a different subject. "What are we going to do now?"

Cole shrugs. "What we've been doing. What else can we do? He'll stay with us until we find a way to get him back home or he just disappears all on his own."

"Cole," says Zane quietly. Lloyd has to strain to hear him. "We're barely scraping by as it is."

"We'll make it work," Cole says. His tone is firm. "We're not turning him out on the streets. He's Lloyd, even if he is suddenly eight years older."

"That's not what I was saying," Zane says. He sounds hurt now, and Lloyd wants to go to him but it would give his eavesdropping away. "Do you really think so little of me?"

"No, I'm sorry," Cole says. He turns to face Zane head-on, and the moon lights up his face. "I know you didn't mean it like that." He groans. "I'm just-"

"You're stressed," says Zane, sympathetic again. "It's understandable. Our youngest just appeared on our doorstep nearly a decade older than he should be. I think anyone would be stressed over that." He pauses then, and when he speaks again, Lloyd closes his eyes to focus on his words better. "For what it's worth, I think you're doing a good job."

Cole exhales. "Thanks, Zane."

They're silent for a much longer period this time, so much so that Lloyd thinks the conversation is over and ended. Right when he's about to return inside, however, Cole's voice floats up on the cool breeze.

He's turned out okay," he says softly, near whispers. "I think we did good."


	2. the only one in a different spacetime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Don't get too smug over there," warns Kai, taking his smile for confidence. "There's four of us and only one of you. Even if you are older now, you're still outnumbered."
> 
> Lloyd decides not to tell him that four-on-one is a ratio he wishes for most days. "Care to find out?" he goads instead, cracking his knuckles and grinning at the glare he gets back.
> 
> "Oh, it is on," Jay says. "Prepare to get your butt kicked!"
> 
> And someone does get their butt kicked. It's just not Lloyd.

Breakfast the next morning is pallor. A piece of toast, with a pat of butter in the middle, and a single sausage link greet Lloyd from his plate, lukewarm when he prods them with his fork.

Lloyd's stomach rumbles, reminding him he hasn't eaten a full meal since the morning before. He attacks the food with vigor, practically shoveling it into his mouth. Food is food, and these rations are far from the worst he's faced.

"Woah there, Tiger," Kai says. "You're gonna choke if you keep that up."

Lloyd feels his heart skip a beat. "I'm already done anyway," he says, shoving the last bite into his mouth to try and mask the grin that's stretching across his face. He must not succeed, because Kai gives him a weird look as he turns back to his own plate.

Screw him. Lloyd doesn't care. That's the first time Kai's said something nice to him since he arrived- he's allowed to be happy about it, dang it.

"Here," Cole says. Suddenly, the earth ninja is leaning over his chair. He pushes half of his own plate onto Lloyd's, making sure to give him a good-sized portion. When Lloyd looks at him in question, Cole gives him a half-grin. "I'm not hungry. You have it."

That's a lie. Cole, at least as a human, is always hungry. Lloyd pushes the food around on his plate, suddenly with less enthusiasm.

"What's on the schedule today, boss?" Jay asks. He's sitting beside Nya, perfectly normally and politely, hands kept in his own personal space and no stray limbs flying every which way. It's crazy. Lloyd thinks back to his own set of Jaya- by this time Nya would have her arm around the back of Jay's chair at _least_ , with Jay's feet tucked under her thighs like they were on a couch instead of at the table. He shakes his head. _Crazy_.

"I think our first order of business is Lloyd," Cole says. Lloyd's head jerks up from where he's stabbing the sausage- hey, if Cole's not actually going to eat it, it shouldn't go to waste- and sees kid him reacting too from the corner of his eye.

"Sorry," Cole hurries to correct. "Big Lloyd." He sighs. "This... could get confusing."

"Really?" says Nya. "I've just been referring to them as little-Lloyd and slightly-less-little-Lloyd in my head."

"Har har," deadpans Lloyd.

Nya grins cheekily.

"Little Lloyd could work," Zane muses. "It's descriptive enough to be an identifier, while also being able to pass off as a nickname if someone were to ask."

"Lil-Lloyd?" Jay tries out. He receives a fervent shake of the head from kid Lloyd. "Yeah, you're right, that sounds dumb."

"We can workshop the name later," Kai says. "There are more important things to think about right now."

"Kai's right," Nya says. "If Lloyd's here, does that mean he's missing from his own time?"

Lloyd blanches. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind before, but now he's imagining it and shivering. Ninjago without the Green Ninja to protect it? That might have been fine in the past, but not for the present. And while he doesn't think he's better than his team- _his_ Nya would take him to the mat if she heard him thinking that- the fact remains that, in terms of raw power, he's the strongest and most versatile of them all.

"It's possible," Zane says after a moment, concern tightening his expression. "Since our Lloyd is still here, it's not like he replaced older Lloyd's spot in the future."

"Another reason why this has to be our first priority," Cole says.

"But what about training?" Kid Lloyd asks, a whine creeping into his voice.

Cole winces. "I don't know, kiddo. This is going to take up most of our foreseeable future. We might have to put your training on the back burner for now."

Kid Lloyd slouches in his chair. Jay gives him a consolidating pat on the back.

"Well, what about a tea?" Nya proposes. "Didn't Sensei Wu use one to bring Garmadon back? Maybe there's a magical time-travel-tea as well."

"Maybe," Lloyd says thoughtfully. It wouldn't hurt to check out the tea shop that Uncle frequents in town. He gets up to find some pen and paper; he knows from past experience that if he doesn't write stuff down it disappears from his head the next second.

"If that doesn't work, I suggest we turn our attention to research," says Zane as he returns to the table. "Ninjago's history is studded with relics and artifacts, rumored to have powers beyond the ordinary. Our Golden Weapons are proof enough that such rumors may not have been entirely unfounded."

Lloyd writes _time travel tea_ and _magical relics_ at the top of the list. "We could ask Uncle Wu too," he thinks out loud. "He might know some things that aren't written down in books."

"Sensei Wu's been gone a lot recently," Nya says. "But that's a good idea, as long as you can catch him."

Lloyd rips their list out and pins it to the fridge. It's not the longest, but it's not like there's much more they could add even if they wanted to. "Alright," he says aloud. "So who wants what?"

Automatically, the other ninja spin around to face Cole. The earth ninja looks like he expected this, but Lloyd takes a second longer to cotton on. He flushes when he does, and Zane gives him a knowing look.

"It's Saturday today," Cole says, tapping his chin, "so the tea shop might be closed. But we have some of Sensei's books here, and the library should be open too." He nods, almost to himself. "Let's start with research and check on the other things when Monday rolls around."

The other ninja chorus their agreement. One by one, they stand to clear their dishes. Lloyd tries to make a break for it, but Cole catches him by his dragon-patterned sleeve.

"Hey, wait a minute, Lloyd."

Begrudgingly, Lloyd pauses.

Cole gives him a glance-over, eyes betraying nothing about his inner thoughts. "Let me guess," he says after a moment. "You've started taking on more responsibilities in the team. Leadership, am I right?"

Lloyd squirms. "Well, yes-" he admits. "But I don't want to take over _your_ role." He almost could shudder at the thought. Even in his present, Cole's always been the one backing him up as he ventures into his new position on the team. He never wants to lose that.

But Cole grins. "I didn't think you did, kiddo." He drops Lloyd's sleeve, and his face softens. "But you don't have to be afraid to say what you think, either. I want to hear your thoughts and opinions too. Okay?"

"Okay," Lloyd says. Tentatively, he returns Cole's grin. "I'll let you know if I have any other thoughts." He fiddles with a loose thread on his sleeve. "And thank you. For helping me get back.

"We're a team," Cole says. "It's what we do." He claps him on the back and rises from his chair, stacking his plate on top of Lloyd's. "Now, let's help the others out with the cleanup so we can actually get started."

* * *

Lloyd examines the sword that's been suddenly thrust into his hands. "What's this?" he asks, swinging the blade several times. "I thought we were here for training kid me."

Indeed, kid Lloyd is standing on the sidelines, looking increasingly put out as he realizes that they're not looking toward him. Lloyd sets the sword to the side, against the wall and away from the center of the room. It's been several days since their morning meeting. So far, the only thing they've been able to check is magical teas off their list. They're getting antsy, Lloyd knows, and so is he with every day that passes.

"I mean, it's technically training for him," Cole reasons. "Since you are him from the future, the more we know about your powers the better we can help him." He grins, revealing what might be his truer motivation. "And you still haven't shown us what you can do, not really. The stuff at the apartment the other day doesn't count. Can you blame a fella for being curious?"

"No, but I can blame him for saying 'fella'," Kai grumbles. "Seriously? 'Fella'? What are you, an uncle?"

"Just because you came from a rural area-"

As they continue their bickering, they finish stretching and fan out in a loose semicircle in front of Lloyd. Kid Lloyd still looks put out, but he seems to have accepted his lot and sits down at the edge of the room.

Lloyd grins despite himself. He's actually looking forward to this, he realizes. Training is familiar in its motions and movements and the way it forces his brain to turn off for _once_. He doesn't have to think about scheduling their next PR outing, or the best way to avoid paparazzi, or the mountain of debriefs he keeps meaning to finish, sorry Uncle Wu. During training, all those responsibilities fall to the sidelines in favor of drilling, dueling, and sparring.

"Don't get too smug over there," warns Kai, taking his smile for confidence. "There's four of us and only one of you. Even if you are older now, you're still outnumbered."

Lloyd decides not to tell him that four-on-one is a ratio he wishes for most days. "Care to find out?" he goads instead, cracking his knuckles and grinning at the glare he gets back.

"Oh, it is on," Jay says. "Prepare to get your butt kicked!"

And someone _does_ get their butt kicked. It's just not Lloyd.

When Lloyd was younger, the ninja were practically _invincible_. They were a well-greased machine that operated together perfectly, no complications to be found. Now, forced to confront his past so literally, he admits that his memory is a _bit_ rose-tinged. Their teamwork is good, even better than good in some places, but they still have a long way to go. Zane is too hesitant in his attacks, Kai too aggressive. Jay has a hard time thinking for himself and Cole is all too happy to think for him.

"Jay," he barks now, "go left. Let's try and surround him, okay, guys?"

What should have been a matter of quick eye contact and instinctive understanding of one another is conversations carried out loud for all to hear. It's almost laughably easy to defend against. Lloyd sends a blast of ice towards Jay, herding him so he crashes into Kai.

"Get off of me!" shouts the fire ninja, shoving him away.

Jay's arms windmill wildly.

Lloyd takes advantage of their distraction to freeze both of their feet to the ground. He can't help his grin at their outraged cries, turning quickly to avoid the shuriken- rubber, for training- that flies past his head. It circles around to Zane, who snatches it from the air without looking and immediately sends out another one.

There's a shout from behind. Cole looms over him, kama flashing in the sunlight. Lloyd smirks. He employs just the _slightest_ burst of speed and gets to watch Cole react, in glorious slow-motion, to the shuriken suddenly beelining toward his forehead. He raises his kama a beat too late and goes down with a solid _thud_.

Lloyd stands in the center of their group, the calm spot in the center of a storm. He puts his hands on his hips. "So, what was that you saying about a butt-kicking again?" Kid Lloyd lets out a loud "ha!" from across the room.

"No need to rub it in," grouses Jay, who hilariously enough _is_ rubbing his own bottom as he says it. He's halfway on the ground, caught in the middle as Kai works to melt the block of ice around their feet.

"Ow," Cole says, pressing gently around the lump above his eyes. "That's going to leave a mark."

Lloyd winces. "Sorry. At least it wasn't metal?"

He thinks he deserves the dry look he gets in return.

"Well, that settles one thing," says Kai. When Lloyd looks for him reflexively, the fire ninja is massaging feeling back into his toes.

"What's that?" asks Zane. He has a hand pressed to Cole's forehead, presumably trying to lessen any swelling with his ice.

Kai looks directly at Lloyd. "There's no question that you're the green ninja."

It feels like pressure Lloyd didn't even _know_ he was carrying sloughs off him. He didn't realize until this very moment that part of the reason he was showing off so much, responding to and escalating their taunts, was because he was subconsciously trying to impress them. To impress Kai, but also impress them all. Kai's approval comes like light rainfall during a hot summer day.

Tentatively, Lloyd smiles at him. Kai doesn't smile back, but he doesn't glare either. Lloyd still takes it solidly as a win.

"No kidding!" Jay exclaims. "He wiped the floor with us!"

Finally, Lloyd allows his grin to spread across his face in full. "And that's me out of practice," he teases. When Jay groans even louder, he crosses his arms across his chest. "Hey, it's not my fault I have more experience than you do."

Kai's face goes stony in a single second. "Whatever." He pushes himself to his feet and seizes up his sword. It's like whatever good mood he had before never existed in the first place as he stalks away.

Lloyd gapes after his retreating form. What just happened? Did he even _do_ anything in the three seconds it took for that mood switch?

"Geez, what a sore loser," says Jay, propping himself up on his elbow. "He didn't even finish unfreezing me!"

Something about the explanation doesn't sit right with Lloyd's gut. After a moment, though, he forces himself to drop it. "Yeah," he says. He tears his eyes away from Kai's back and crouches down beside Jay. "Hey, let me help you with that."

The rest of the afternoon progresses normally, but Lloyd just can't shake that sense of _un-rightness_ off.

That night finds them all swaddled in blankets, trying to stave off the cold that the apartment heating never helps with. It's late, later than is probably advisable for how strenuous their routines are. All of them _should_ be resting in preparation for the next day. But sleeplessness has seized them all, and though the lights are off inside, the lights from the city spill in through the cracks and highlight their wide-awake faces with yellow and orange.

"Okay, but you've got to tell me this one thing," whines Jay. "Do we ever get a TV show made after us, yes or no?" He huffs dramatically. "A simple answer would suffice!"

Nya abandons her pretense of sleeping in favor of her favorite pastime: gentle-yet-unerringly-accurate-ribbing. "You just want to know if you get played by Cliff Gordon," she teases.

"The man is talented!" Jay protests, which isn't a _no_. " _And_ we share a striking resemblance!"

They all pause to roll their eyes at that. Jay and his jokes. Anyone with a braincell can see they look _nothing_ alike.

"Yeah, I don't know if I should tell you that," Lloyd says. "Don't want it going to your head and all that."

Jay whoops. "You didn't say no!"

They're going to get a noise complaint from the neighbors at this rate, but Lloyd can't bring himself to care. Not when it's the first time since he's got here that he's felt this comfortable and relaxed in his own skin.

"Hey, hey," he says, waving a hand around to smack the lightning ninja. "I didn't say no because I didn't want to give you any ideas about the future!"

"Does it really matter?" asks Kai. He gives Lloyd one of his looks, the one where he's trying to hide his endearment and failing pretty badly at it. Lloyd preens at the attention like a cat. "Didn't you already say that if something bad were to happen, it would already have happened by now?"

"Yes," Lloyd says. Then: "No. But maybe?" He burrows further into his blanket. "I don't know. It's not like I make it a habit to time-travel back to the baby versions of my team."

"Baby!" protests Jay.

"Let's try to keep this conversation down," says Zane, rolling over onto his side. "Some of us are asleep." He tilts his head toward the other side of the room, where the lump of blankets that is kid Lloyd is shifting intermittently. The rest of the ninja nod, quieting.

Zane props himself up on an elbow. "I do have a question of my own, though."

Lloyd makes finger guns at him. "Fire away."

When Zane speaks, it's after a pause that feels calculating. He speaks carefully, slow and measured, like he's asking an interview question. "Kai's own question made me wonder," he says. "Is there anything we should be watching or paying attention to in the next five years?"

Before Lloyd can even finish processing the question, Cole's sitting up straighter on the floor. "The next five years?" he asks, a question of his own in the draw of his eyebrows.

Zane nods. His eyes are heavy with something Lloyd can't parse. "The other day at the dojo, Lloyd told me that when he came from was 2017."

"Huh?" says Kai. He counts on his fingers, eyes narrowing. "But that's only sixteen."

Following this line of questioning is like playing ping-pong. "Sixteen what?" Lloyd asks, but Nya's eyes are already widening.

"Yeah, what about that?" she asks. "Are you really sixteen, then?" She searches Lloyd's face, which has to be a comical mixture between confused and frustrated right now. "Why'd you lie?"

"Is Lloyd a baby again?" Jay coos. ("'m not a baby," Lloyd mumbles.) "Aww, did you think we wouldn't take you seriously enough? Because I can't vouch for the other guys, but I'm sure Zane would have."

"You just did," Zane says dryly.

Jay waves his hand. "Potato, potato."

"Wait, wait-" says Lloyd, because he has literally no clue what's going on anymore. Are they talking about his age or potatoes? "I'm nineteen," he says, gesturing almost aggressively at himself in a way that has his blanket fall from his shoulders. "Nineteen. Not sixteen."

"Nineteen," Zane says, almost to himself. He raises his head and makes eye contact with Lloyd. "And you're from 2017?"

Lloyd nods.

"But that's only five years," Nya says slowly. "And you're eleven now. So how did-"

Oh. _Oh_. Lloyd finally gets what's up. "Oh," he says aloud, for posterity's sake. He says it once more for good measure. "Oh, that. Yeah. I took a magic tea and it skipped me up a couple of years." _Great_ , he thinks, _and now they're going to start beating themselves up over a thing that they haven't even done_. It's not even something bad! He's doing just fine! "It's not that big of a deal, honestly."

Kai looks green at the gills. "Skipped you up a couple of years?" he repeats, voice cracking.

Lloyd shrugs. "Like, from eleven to fifteen? Ish? It's kinda hard to pinpoint with things like that."

"Eleven," says Zane quietly.

His eyes drift sideways- sideways to the bed across from him. Like thralls, they all look too. The lump in kid Lloyd's bed stays resolutely still.

"Not that big of a deal?" Cole says, turning back to big Lloyd. "What _happened_?"

"Did you feel pressured into growing up faster?" asks Zane.

"Yeah," says Nya. "Why _in the world_ would you do that to yourself?"

"I didn't want to!" Lloyd says, and then is aware of how that must sound to them. "But I didn't not want to either." He sighs. "So there was a situation where you all were magically turned into kids- don't ask, I have no idea how- and someone Jurassic-Parked a dinosaur to life. We needed the tea to change you back and to turn it back into a pile of bones. I was just in the right place at the right time. It's Not a Big Deal."

"Bullshit," bursts Kai, voice rising dangerously. The fire ninja is upright now, hands braced against his mattress like he's preparing to pounce. "That is a big deal, Lloyd! If you're trying to downplay it for _our sakes_ -"

"I'm _not_ trying to downplay it!"

"So you really think that way?"

A heavy _thump_ from across the room freezes all of them in their tracks. Lloyd's eyes locate the source of the sound first- a metal water bottle has rolled off the edge of the bed- and traces the origin back to the wide red eyes staring out from beneath a blanket.

"Lloyd," says Zane, instantly softening his voice to something gentle. "What are you doing awake? It's late. You should be sleeping right now."

Kid him sits further up in bed, blanket still pulled up to his chin. "I just woke up," he says. "You guys were being really loud. What's going on? What's wrong?" His eyes jump back and forth to each ninja, seeking reassurance.

"Nothing," Cole says after a beat of time has passed. He scrubs his hand down his face. "It's nothing, kiddo. Just go back to sleep, alright? We'll be done in a few minutes."

Kid Lloyd isn't convinced, Lloyd just _knows_ it. He also knows that, as the boy hesitantly lies down again, he's going to be doing everything _but_ sleeping. He's going to go along with what he's told during a stressful situation in order to not escalate it, but he's not going to actually go to sleep while there's danger present.

The other ninja might not know this exactly, but they do fall silent to let kid Lloyd 'go back to sleep'. Exhaustion settles into Lloyd's bones. When he glances at the others, he sees the same crash mirrored in their faces. In the short interlude, the frenzic, rising energy has drained from the room. None of them know how to continue the conversation, and quite frankly, Lloyd doesn't want to.

"Yeah, I do think that way," he says, in response to Kai's earlier outburst. "There's a lot of things we've _all_ done for the sake of the greater good."

His eyes drift to Zane, who still bears his human appearance, and Cole, solid and tangible in his bed. He thinks of Pixal, still disembodied, and Nya, who just had to pack up her Samurai X gear as her ninja duties demanded her full attention. Kai with his insomnia and chronic nightmares, where he dreams of all of them dying slow, suffocating deaths, and Jay with the scars littering his back and a perpetual eye twitch he still won't explain even when pressed.

Lloyd exhales. "So this- this is not a big deal. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I needed to." He rolls over onto his side, facing away from them. "It's late. I'm going to go to sleep."

There's another strained period of silence following his declaration, so much so that Lloyd thinks for a second that they actually fell asleep too. His ears strain for sound, eyes closed to try to hone the sense. Some part of his mind recognizes the irony- or would it be consistency in this case?- that he's doing the same thing as his younger self. Eventually, there comes the noise of bed sheets rustling. Cole exhales, slow and weighted.

"I think we need to sleep on this," he admits. It's a testament to either their collective exhaustion or thought process that the rest of the ninja don't protest. Murmurs of assent come in and soon, Lloyd can hear them preparing for bed or lying down.

Lloyd pulls his blanket up to his chin and pretends that he's already asleep too.

It's a long time before he actually is.

* * *

Lloyd slides into his final stance, legs set apart and hand stretched out in a fist against some imaginary enemy. He holds the position for a moment, savoring the way the burn settles into his muscles. Then he drops his hands and stands up straight again, the exercise complete.

It's another day at the dojo, with Lloyd, frustrated at the lack of their research progress, letting out his feelings in one of the only ways he knows how. They've been searching for _days_ now, combing through every piece of information they can get their hands on, and with every passing day that yields no results, the anxiety in Lloyd's stomach grows.

Even training can only go so far to take his mind off things. Still, he finds himself returning to exercise increasingly, seeking whatever distraction he can. Lloyd's chest heaves beneath his shirt. He wipes his hand against his forehead and starts into his next drill.

He's not alone in the dojo. Jay is currently on break, propped up against the wall close to him. And on the other side of the room, Kai is furiously running through his own katas. Each time he completes one, his speed goes up, so that eventually he's flying through each exercise with fire bursting wildly from his clenched fists.

Just watching him makes Lloyd exhausted. He pauses in his own kata to get a drink, downing half the bottle in one go. The rest he very seriously debates pouring over head. It's only the knowledge that Jay's watching him that stops him from doing so.

Speaking of which- the lightning ninja is waving him over, another water bottle in his hand. Lloyd doesn't need to be told twice. He collapses into a sit beside Jay, letting his head loll against the wall.

"You wanna rock," Jay says, apropos nothing.

Lloyd cracks open one eye. "Huh?"

Jay draws something from his pocket. It is indeed a rock. Lloyd isn't sure what else he was expecting.

"Thanks," he says dryly. "You've stone-len my heart."

Jay laughs, ever one to appreciate puns even when he's not the one making them. "How bould-er of me," he replies. He passes the rock to Lloyd. "Hey, you wanna know why I picked this one up?"

Lloyd doesn't have a guess. The stone is small, small enough that he can close his fingers over it, and the texture is bumpy in places and smoother in others.

Jay waits for him to finish inspecting it, a grin slowly stretching across his face. "It reminded me of Kai," he confesses.

Lloyd immediately bursts into giggles. "No!"

"Yes!" Jay says back, giggling too. "Look at those ridges! Tell me that's not his hair, I dare you!"

Now that Lloyd has the picture in his mind, it does damningly resemble the fire ninja's spikes. He groans, holding it up above his head. It's just a plain rock from the side of the road. But Jay's imagination turned it into so much more.

"I'm keeping this," he says, slipping it into his pocket. "It's mine now. But what's the occasion? Is it national rock day or something?"

"Does there have to be a reason?" Jay asks. He sighs when Lloyd gives him a Look. "Okay, so maybe I thought you could use a little cheering up. I know the other night got kinda intense."

Lloyd snorts. Intense is an understatement. "Well, I do feel cheered," he admits. He prods him gently in the side. "So it's fulfilled its _roll,_ huh?"

But Jay only laughs at the joke a little. His face is uncharacteristically somber as he leans forward and looks into Lloyd's face. "Lloyd, you know that we care about you, right?" he says. "I mean, I've never had a sibling myself, but we all think of you as ours."

Lloyd ducks his head away. This conversion that started with funny rocks is taking a sharp nosedive into feeling territory and he is Not liking it. He thinks of a line from one of his favorite shows as a kid: _the nachos tricked me!_ But Jay taps him on his shoulder, gentle yet insistent, and forces him to turn back round again.

"I mean it, Lloyd," he says, blue eyes serious. "If one of us got hurt, you'd worry, right?"

Lloyd nods begrudgingly, already knowing where this is going. He's had this lecture multiple times before, but the team always seems to think that he needs to hear it again for some reason. Even in the past, it seems that Jay is not the exception.

"So of course we're going to worry about you too," he says. He holds his gaze for a second longer, before deciding that's enough eye contact and leans back. "I just wanted you to know that, no matter what, we're all on your side."

Lloyd tries not to. But he can't help the way his eyes seek out Kai, still at the other end of the room. The fire ninja is _still_ drilling, and even from this far away Lloyd can see the sharp crispness of his movements. "Not everyone," he says beneath his breath.

Jay follows the line of his eyes. He makes a noise in the back of his throat. "Kai- well. He's prickly until you get to know him."

Normally, Lloyd would be able to brush off his feelings and shove them away for consideration at a later date (re: never) but Jay's cracked open the gate and suddenly it's like he can't shut his mouth even if he wanted to. "But I do know him," he says, letting his head thunk back against the wall. "That's the problem. I know him the best back home, but here- half the time he won't even look at me."

"Just give him a little more time," says Jay, in a tone that sounds like he's trying to convince both of them "You'll see. He'll come around soon."

Lloyd hums noncommittally. "I guess so," he says. "I hope so."

He fingers the rock in his pocket and wonders just how much time 'a little' is.

* * *

Lloyd's washing the dishes after dinner when Zane slides up silently beside him and takes a towel.

"Let me help you with those," the ice ninja says, reaching for the rack of air-drying dishes.

Lloyd scoots to the left so he has room to work. "Oh. Thank you."

Zane hums acknowledgment and continues to work. Lloyd waits a second longer before returning to the caked-on stain he's been scrubbing at. He rinses the bowl once it's clean and sets it aside in the drying rack. The silence is weighted, and he wonders what's on Zane's mind tonight.

This time, he doesn't have to wait long to find out.

"I never got around to apologizing for the other night," Zane says, five minutes into his dish drying.

Lloyd blinks. "Apologizing for what?" he asks, perplexed. His hands still in the soapy water.

Zane passes the towel across the front of the plate. "For the way I handled the information about your aging. I should have brought my suspicions to you first, privately, instead of airing them to the whole group."

That does give Lloyd pause. While the circumstances of _how_ weren't his ideal ones, he also knows that it would have all come sooner or later anyway. "You don't need to apologize," he says finally. "They would have put it together eventually, with or without your help."

Zane sets the plate aside and takes up a new one. "Well, I appreciate your forgiveness."

Lloyd reaches into the soapy water for a new dish. "If we're doing apologies," he says, "there's something I should probably say too. The first night I got here, I accidentally overheard you and Cole talking outside. I didn't follow you or anything!" he hurries to clarify. "I was already out there, but I could have gone inside when I heard you and I didn't."

"Where were you? I never sensed anyone else outside with us."

"On the fire escape."

"The fire escape?" Zane looks amused now. "Well, that's why I didn't notice, then." He smiles softly at Lloyd. "It's alright. What Cole and I were discussing _did_ concern you, and I don't blame you for listening in."

"Thanks," Lloyd says. "I appreciate your forgiveness," he parrots, just to see Zane's smile quirk up at the corner.

When they return to their dishes, the silence is now companionable. Lloyd flicks soap suds at Zane, shrieking when the ice ninja returns the favor with a blank face. Nya hears the commotion and sticks her head in, gasping in mock outrage when she gets caught in the crossfire.

"It is on," she says, grinning madly.

All Lloyd can say is that he's glad she's not aware of her water powers yet. The kitchen ends up covered with the water they were meant to be cleaning with, and then they have to go around and clean all of it up.

"You were the one to start it," Zane points out jovially. He gets a soapy slap in the back for his troubles.

* * *

"Got any ones?"

Jay scrunches his nose. "What do I look like, a bank? Go fish."

It's a terrible pun, but Lloyd still laughs as he draws from the deck. Technically they should be training right now, but the dojo has been shut down for a "corn-chip related incident" and there was nothing any of them could really do about that. And while Nya and kid him are out getting groceries, and Zane and Kai are off at their jobs, Lloyd, Jay, and Cole are passing the time with rounds of Go Fish.

The door squeaks open. Kai freezes in the doorway, eyes wide and mid-step. "Hey guys," he says, hurriedly positioning himself into a lean against the frame. "I- didn't expect all of you to be home right now," he mumbles. "Okay. How's it going?"

The longer Kai rambles, the more suspicious Cole looks. "Fine," he says slowly. "What's up with you?"

Kai shrugs. "Oh, you know. The usual." He shifts. Something has to happen that Lloyd doesn't see because suddenly, Kai's face is screwed up with pain and he gasps out softly.

Jay and Cole are on their feet immediately. Each of them takes one of Kai's arms, helping him over to the nearest bed.

"What is it?" Cole frets. "Your leg?"

"Yeah- sh-oot, my ankle," Kai grits out. He's deposited gently on the blankets, foot hovering awkwardly over the floor.

"Did you get involved in another mugging again?" Cole demands, immediately fussing over his leg. Jay brings pillows and they prop his leg up. He cradles his ankle in his hands, prodding softly at the bruises already forming.

Kai's resounding silence is an answer enough.

"Kai!"

"I'm a ninja, Cole," Kai spits. "What did you want me to do, ignore it? You know I can't."

And oh- Lloyd remembers this. The times when Kai would get frustrated and storm out of their room, or apartment, or school, only to return hours later with bruises and split knuckles. How he threw himself into fighting after they thought Zane was gone, how he punished himself when Lloyd was possessed, not getting enough rest or sleep, bags heavy under his eyes.

It's one of the things Lloyd most admires about Kai. It's one of the things he most fears.

"Lemme see," Lloyd says, pushing past all of them. Miraculously, they part and allow him through. He drops to the floor beside Kai's propped-up foot, taking it into his hands.

"Did you walk here?" he asks.

"Yeah," Kai says. He winces as Lloyd tilts his foot back and forth. "Ow! Hey, watch it."

Lloyd prods the swollen part of his ankle. "If you were able to put weight on it, that's a good sign." He shifts it so Kai's more comfortable and gives him a pat on the shin. "It'll be okay. It's just a sprain. Ice it and keep it elevated and you'll be fine."

Zane passes him a roll of bandages. Lloyd takes it without looking. He wraps Kai's ankle up methodically, fingers moving without being told. The actions are familiar, ingrained in his senses.

"Wow," says Jay, peeking over his shoulder. "You're good at this."

Lloyd's tongue pokes out the side of his mouth. "Uh-huh," he mutters noncommittally. "I've had a lot of practice." He tapes the edge of a bandage down and starts the next pattern across his ankle.

The whole time he works, Kai refuses to look at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much! I love each and every one of your kudos and reviews!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for checking this story out! If you enjoyed it, and enjoy characters meeting different variations of themselves, lloydskywalkers has a really great fic called [It's Me (Version 2-point-0)](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13132232/1/It-s-Me-Version-2-point-0) on FFN.net that's about show!Lloyd and movie!Lloyd meeting. SunnyLighter's fic [The Grass is Always Greener](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18779539) is also a fun hiijinky 'Lloyd's swap places' story that's definitely worth checking out.


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